


Echoes of Winter

by xvalkyrieofodin



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Buckynat mini bang, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3580047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xvalkyrieofodin/pseuds/xvalkyrieofodin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha knows something is missing.  Something in her gut tells her that there is something gravely wrong, and her gut has become one of her best assets over the years.  She also knows that the Winter Soldier has been keeping tabs on her, though she can’t figure out why.  Lately when she thinks about her past, about the details of those that shaped her, that unmade and remade her, the memories are even more fuzzy than before.  Images that were once sharp and vivid, now seem like watercolor paintings, lacking color and filled with blurry borders.</p><p>As she goes to explore her past, she finds that again the Winter Soldier is watching from the shadows, like a dark guardian.  Natasha realizes that she must also figure out his purpose in this, his connection to her past. She confronts him about his involvement, only to discover what was taken from her by Leo Novokov.  Natasha does her best to come to terms with this, and she forced to make a decision: Leave the memories and life that was stolen from her behind, or choose to regain what was taken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of Winter

 Fragmented memories, irrational memories, are nothing new to Natasha Romanoff.  She has picked up and torn apart her memories so many times before, now it feels like a giant puzzle where the pieces don’t quite fit anymore. The energy expended to put them back together feels like it would just cause frustration, so she tries to focus on the present and the future, rather than the confusing echoes of the past.

That’s the thing about the past... Memories are only one version of it.  

Spies deal in intelligence, tiny bits of information that lead to facts and figures and tangible proof.  It was easy, years ago after the fall of the Soviet Union, to find the files from the Red Room.  To use their information to find the truth about who she was, who she had been.  As she pulled it all together, she was able to separate her own fact from fiction.  Her thoughts still drift back to all this, because something is off.

“Nat, you comin’ out for dinner?” Clint says beside her, pulling her instantly out of her musings.  

She can see the others waiting for her and Clint to join them, and they seem happy.    They had just defeated the villain of the day, yet another megalomaniac in the streets of New York, and they intended to engage in a traditional Avengers dinner after a good fight.  She knew where that led, smiles and stories and shared memories of fallen foes.

“I’ve got to...I need to feed my cat.  I haven’t been home since yesterday.”  She says, declining in the only way she could think of.  

For a spy, she is certain this is not her best performance, but her teammates, her friends, they do not push or ask her again.  They simply offer smiles and walk away.

Lately even when she joined them, she did not feel as if she was truly part of them.  How could any of them understand what was happening to her?  None of them knew what it was to be unmade and remade, over and over again, for someone else’s nefarious purpose.  

Instead she returns to her apartment, makes a cup of tea, and attempts to curl up with “Anna Karenina”.  Tolstoy had always offered her comfort in times of turmoil.  Tonight it seems her age old remedy did not have the desired effect.  Natasha finds herself shifting back and forth in bed with the dim screen of her tablet the only light.  She still enjoys the feeling of real books, but reading on the tablet allows her to sit in near darkness, alone but enveloped at the same time.

It was no use, the peace she yearns for elludes her, so after several minutes she leaves the tablet behind in bed, and walks into her bathroom.  

She stares at her reflection, as if it might speak to her, confirm her growing unease by revealing the reason for it.

It only looks back at her with confusion.  

Natasha closes her eyes and moves through her memories, selecting images out of her mind and attempting to isolate them.  Parts of the last five years feel strange, some memories feel distant and old, like they were from her childhood, but they aren’t.  They are recent memories, some less than a year old.

Like watercolor spread haphazardly over a canvas, she can make out the outlines but the rest bleed together.  Natasha moves further back in her mind and finds that those memories feel oddly clear, compared to her recent recollections.  She can vividly recount meeting Clint, betraying him, joining the Avengers, even leading them for a short time.  

Her memories of the Red Room and her time with the Soviet Union were the ones she worked hard to solidify, but now they feel muddled again.  Her body knows the things she learned there, the muscle memory from that time forever imprinted on her body, but as hard as she tries, she can not place who did the bulk of her training back then.  All she can remember was the warmth she felt for her instructor, a sort of camaraderie that went against her Red Room training.

She slams her fist down on the bathroom counter in frustration, unable to force the memories to clear.  

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…” Natasha says with a sigh, recounting the old English nursery rhyme.  “...I’ve got to put myself back together, again.”

When she opens her eyes again, her reflection holds a significantly different demeanor.  A look of determination, of quiet but resolved focus, now shown in her features.

Natasha walks out of the bathroom and down the hall to the room she can only really call an office.  It often went unused, it is not really the place for her to plan out missions or dissect documents.  She walks over to a white board and begins to write upon it, all the details she can think of that don’t make sense.  The missing memories, her recent abduction by Leo Novokov, her friends odd and secretive attitudes since that time, and the sudden appearance of the Winter Soldier, like a guardian angel, in her life.  

All of it has ties to Mother Russia, to the time she trained in her homeland.  Logan said when she was captured, all of her close friends banded together to bring her back, to hunt her down.  Natasha stares that the board a moment, before she giving a distinct nod of her head.

It is time for the Black Widow to go on a hunt of her own.

 

****************************

From there, Natasha easily decides on a plan of action.  SHIELD has many files on the Red Room and other Soviet programs, and there is a chance she can get at them without much effort.  The only problem she sees, is the fact that the people that work there, most know her and some know her well.   Her friends had already gone to such lengths to “protect” her, who was to say the files would even there?  And if they were, what if they were altered in some way?

 

It all leads her to the conclusion that she needs to go back, back to where all this started.

Back to Russia.

 

****************************

 

Natasha feels strange at times when she returns home, because it Russia hasn’t felt like home in a while.  Sure, she can speak the language, her roots are here, but so little ties her to this place in the years since she left it.  Ivan is gone, the girl she once was is gone.  It’s odd, but Natasha feels as if this loss was a recent one, as if there was something else tying her to homeland, a tether that is gone now.  

She breaks into an old facility, not even bothering to do much in the way of espionage along the way.  It has been long since abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union, either due to budget cuts or lack of interest, and she notices no visible security measures on her way in.  It’s , dark, empty and dirty, dust accumulating from years of neglect, but she soldiers on.  She can almost hear the sound of young women marching along the corridors, of sparring matches as she walks past the training rooms.  Echoes of her personal history, the reason she is here.

Natasha catches her reflection in a glass window and for a moment, she thinks she sees that young recruit, the wife and supposed widow of Alexei Shostaskov.  The budding Red Room agent living a double life.  She pushes the memory away, shaking it out of her head.

It takes her awhile to find the generator for the plant.  The blue prints she is using are the original schematics for the building, and they must have updated the infrastructure some time along it’s use.  She finds it though, and brings the building back to life.  The lights reveal the fact that time has slowly destroyed much of this place, but the whir and hum of the lights feels familiar and perhaps even comforting in a way.

There are computers here, and though they were put in long after Natasha spent her time here, she still hopes that there will be something on them.  So many agencies did their best to convert to the digital age, she feels there is a good chance the Red Room followed suit.  

This is a place forgotten, so it seems like a sort of poetic form of justice she might trace her past here and find a way regain the memories she worries she has lost.  She boots up the first computer she finds and her fingers begin to move over the keys, trying to access files that have likely been deleted, but might still exist somewhere on the hard drive.

Everything is going well until she realizes there is someone there with her, someone watching her.  Natasha had not taken too many precautions to ensure she was not followed, mostly because she did not think there was any reason for anyone to follow her back here.  Those that ran the facility were either dead or aged, most of her sisters from the program had either tried to escape the life they were made for or lost their lives trying.  She is the relic of an age, the last piece of a dying time...Or so she thinks.  

Natasha moves quickly, into the shadows of the dimly lit room.  

The Winter Soldier steps into the doorway, and she can see that he is looking in the direction of where she now stands in the darkness.  There is no point in remaining concealed, so she steps forward and puts her hands on the hips.

“почему вы следите за меня?” She asks.  

It’s a simple question, but asking why he follows her carries more weight than the words used to say it. Natasha knows that he has ties to her homeland, but she chooses Russian over English in an attempt to knock him off balance.  He is American, he is the sidekick and best friend of Captain America, this much she knows.  Even if he was an agent of the Soviet Union for a time, the memories of his past changed his allegiances.

“Someone has to watch out for you, Nat.” He responds in English.

“...To keep me safe from a facility that has been abandoned since the Cold War?” She retorts, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“Depends on the facility, really.” He says with a shrug.

He seems calm, she can’t read an tension in his body, but she still does not understand why he is here.

“You keep turning up when I’m either cornered or down the rabbithole.  It makes me wonder after your motivations and your intentions, Barnes.”

His expression falters, only slightly, when she says his last name, as if the way she says it offends him in some way.  He side steps her comment and her in one sweep, walking toward the computer she had just been using.

“What are you doing here, Black Widow?” He asks.  

Natasha knows the name bothered him now, because he has gone from the friendly nickname of “Nat” to her codename.  She moves quickly to place herself between him and the computer, halting his movement.  

It takes her a moment to decide whether or not she wants to answer his question, and then a moment more to decide whether or not she wants to answer it truthfully.  Natasha lifts her gaze and looks at him, her eyes searching his features.  She has learned to read people with excellent precision over her many years as a spy, so she hopes she will be able to find in his face the answers to her own questions.

There is something broken there, perhaps lost, in his expression, but that is all she can divine from the look on his face.  He seems to notice what she is doing and he straightens slightly as a result, smoothing his hands over his uniform as he does.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here, if you want the truth.  Something is missing, something recent and yet old is missing and I am trying to figure out what it is.” She answers, choosing the truth.

If Steve trusts this man, then perhaps she can give him the benefit of the doubt as well.

“Okay then.  Go ahead.” He says, gesturing toward the computer.

Natasha’s eyes narrow on him for a moment, gaging his reaction.  He appears impassive but she thinks it’s a mask, as plain as the one he now wears over his eyes. She purses her lips for a moment and then turns her back to him, her focus again going to the computer.  Her fingers move deftly over the keys, breaking through the computer’s archaic security with little more than a few careful keystrokes.  

And then she is in.  It does not take her long to start digging through files and names from this facility, but she moves through them to find those that both that were trained her and trained the operatives at this facility, because that is one memory she knows is not there.  The first two names she remembers well, the last two she remembers in a more vague well, and then finally she comes to a name that she does not need to remember.

The Winter Soldier.  James “Bucky” Barnes.  

She spins to face him and raises her arm in front of her, pointing a balled fist at his chest, slightly bent at the wrist.  The action may not look as threatening as it actually is, she has her Widow’s bites ready to fire on him.  The sting will not harm him, but it would incapacitate him long enough for her to escape.

“You were here, at the Red Room facility, when I was.  Is that why you followed me here?  Are you still protecting their secrets or protecting your own, Winter Soldier?”  She accuses.

Bucky’s arms raise in a slow surrender, but she can see his facade of indifference cracking as she asks him about the Red Room.

“I was here.  I don’t deny that.  Do you remember my time here?” He asks.

She furrows her brow and shakes her head, a sharp motion.  As Bucky sees her negative response, he pushes out a sigh and again shrugs his shoulders.

“Why don’t I remember you then, Barnes?  I can remember my sisters here, my instructors, the false parents they fabricated for me, but I have no memory of your presence in this place.  I think you know why.  I want you to tell me.” She says firmly.  

“I don’t think you do, Natalia.” He says as if it pains him.

The way he says her name makes her pause, but she  only hesitates for a second before reaffirming her resolve.

“I don’t think you get to make that decision for me.” She whispers back to him, her voice coming out as more of a growl than it had before.

The Winter Soldier crosses his arms in front of him, shifting his weight back and forth in a way that makes him look uncomfortable.  Something feels strangely familiar to Natasha about the way she does it, but like everything else that feels fractured right now, she cannot place why it does.  

“Do you remember Leo Novokov?” He asks.

“Of course, I do.  He’s not the first discarded Soviet soldier that wanted to brainwash me into doing his bidding.” She replies.

His face falls even further at that, which only makes Natasha wish, even more, to know what is behind all this.

“I don’t know if you will believe me…  I know you well enough to know that you’re skeptical at the best of times, but Natasha...I’ll tell you the truth.”  He yields.

“They sent me to you, our masters, when Ivan was dying in the streets.  I offered you the serum.  Ivan did not want to take it, but you were desperate to save him, to keep those that you loved alive and safe, as you always are.  You took it.”

She can remember parts of that, of nearly losing Ivan before a Soviet savior offered them the equivalent of the fountain of youth.  Her arm falls from its defensive position back to her side as she starts to try and remember.

As hard as she tries reconcile Bucky with the blurry figure offering her two syringes, she can’t, and that makes her wonder even more.  It’s as if something is preventing her from even imagining the possibility of Bucky in her past.  The memories feel altered, but she does her best  to push against the fabrication.

“What did he do to me?  What did Novokov take from me?” She demands, the frustration causing her to feel more angry than she expects to.  She has handled this sort of thing before with grace and tranquility, but this time feels different.  

“He took me out of your memories, and at one point replaced himself in my role.  He made you think you were a triple agent, still working for Russia, that you shared some kind of relationship with him...The scientists at SHIELD were able to clear away what he added, but not what he stole.” He explains.

“Well, they should have kept trying.” She responds, her voice a low growl.

She shakes her head in frustration, her gaze falling away from him, as she starts to pace around in the area in front of the computer.

“None of you get it, not really.  Everyday I live with the fact that some of my memories may very well not be mine at all, but it’s not the missions or the training that I worry about.  It’s the moments in between, the personal ones, the ones that I can’t find a place like this, on documents and memos.” Natasha does not realize at first that she has started yelling.

Not loudly, but her voice has raised beyond the tone of polite conversation.  She brings her hands up to her forehead and smooths them over her head.  

“I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault, I just--” She starts, but he cuts her off.

“It was my fault.  Leo Novokov was my fault.”  

“What are you talking about?”

“He targeted you because of your connection to me.”  Bucky says.  

She expects him to drop his head or offer her another sad look, but to his credit, he holds her gaze.

“Then there’s more to the story than you have told me.”

Bucky nods.

“Tell me.”  She again prompts.  

“In the days of the Red Room, we found a...relief in each other.  I don’t know if I would have called it love then, but I think was.  Our superiors discovered the affair, and shortly thereafter they arranged your engagement to Alexei and as for me...They wiped me clean and kept me in suspended animation in between missions.”  He summarizes.

Natasha makes another attempt to dig for these moments he speaks of, but all she can recall feeling apprehensive about the engagement.  She can even remember that being the point where the Red Room programming started to fracture, the point when she was not sure if she was an orphan or had loving parents, if she was a dancer with the Bolshoi or an operative for the Red Room.  

But she notices something she did not before, because now she is knows what she is looking for.  Even if she cannot remember his presence or see his face in her past, she remembers feelings from the time he mentions.  It is a feeling of happiness she remembers, of freedom and of humanity, when she felt like her own person, for a time.  

Her gaze falls to the floor and when she lifts it to see him again, her features are filled with a confusion and curiosity.  The anger drains out of her quickly.

“Novokov used a decades old relationship against you?” She asks, though she can guess at the answer before he says it.

“After Cap restored me...Things between us quickly picked up where they left off pretty quickly.” He explains.

Natasha shrugs at that, unsurprised.  He reaches out and grips her wrist.

“It wasn’t just physical, I can understand the exact thing you just said no one around you could, Natalia.  Because the same people did the same thing to me.  They took me apart and put me back together over and over again, they made me their weapon.  Just like they did to you.”  

She looks down at her arm, his fingers around her wrist.  Even that action, that pleading motion, feels familiar.  She can sense the static between them and it is not only coming from his side.  Natasha stares at his hand for a moment before he releases her, it’s a punctuated move on his part, as if she has looked a little too long at it.  

“Then help me.” She says as she slowly lifts her gaze to meet his.  “I want whatever Novokov took from me, and I plan to get it it back, with or without your help.”

  


*******************************

 

She makes the choice to go to the source of all this trouble, the madman known as Leo Novokov.  Bucky protests, but ultimately he relents.   Novokov is held in the deep dark corner of the Raft, constructed to keep devious and powerful men and women within the its solid and thick walls.  Maria Hill is rather reluctant to let her in to see the madman, Natasha had called her hours before they arrived back in the United States, but when Bucky enters Maria’s office on Natasha’s tail,  Maria changes her mind rather quickly.  Natasha can see that Maria is trying to protect her, that all of her friends and teammates are playing at the same thing, but she will be glad when that charade is over.

The air is stale as they descend into the depths of the Raft, recycled and flat.  Natasha can feel a strange sense of apprehension as the elevator stops and the crate like door opens on it.  Bucky is beside her, and there’s a phantom comfort in his presence.  A part of her is also glad that Maria decided to come along.  She trusts Maria, even if she and the new director of SHIELD do not always agree, they are made of similar stuff.

“Do you want us to come in with you?” Maria asks from behind Natasha, as they all make their way toward cell 3606.  

“No.  I can handle an interrogation on my own.” Natasha says firmly.

“Nat, I don’t think you should be alone with him…”  Bucky interjects.  

Natasha immediately pivots to face him.  She half expects him to run into her, and braces herself for the motion, but he doesn’t.  He reads her motion and reacts accordingly, like this is a dance they have done many times before.

“I need to do this alone.  I need you to understand that.” She says, some of the stern tone she possessed leaving her words as she utters them.  

“Okay.” He nods in a slow acquiescence.   

They approach the door and he reaches for her arm right before she goes to open it.  

“I’m right outside, we’ll be watching if you need us.”  He says.

Natasha does not answer verbally, but offers him a look of agreement.  She knows she can be bad about calling on backup when she needs it, but if the man in this cell has truly caused her to become undone before, she has no intentions of allowing him a second chance.

She steps into the cell and the room immediately illuminates.  Novokov looks up from where he sits on his cot, which sits opposite where she stands, against the wall.  A grin comes to his lips, but it spreads in a slow way, like a snake slithering up a tree.  

“I wondered if I would see you again, little spider.”  He says.

Natasha slides her hands to her hips and smiles back.  She does not need the memories of what he did to her, of the time she spent with him, to know what fashion of a man he is.  He wears his insecurities like an armor, but one that is easily bent and broken, since it is nothing more than a facade of strength.  Men often think strength is all in their bravado, but to Natasha strength is a thing of endurance, of rising after the world knocks you off your feet.  She intends to do just that right now.

“I think you are mistaken about the nature of our relationship, so allow me to clarify for you, Mr.  Novokov....” She starts, her arms cross in front of her and she folds them against her chest.  

She starts to pace evenly back and forth in front of him, she has no fear of him because there are no memories to cause such a fear.  

“...I am not a little spider to you.  I am not the toy you broke to cause injury to a man you appear to be incredibly jealous of…”  She continues.

Novokov shifts when she mentions jealously and his own smile fades.  She knows that he wishes to protest that statement, but she continues without giving him the chance to.  

“...But you will learn, as many have before you, I am no tool for using.  I belong only to myself.”

Natasha steps to the side of the room, her fingers move deftly over a panel there, and she initiates the dropping of the invisible barrier between them.  Novokov perks up again at that, though she is not sure if it is out of apprehension or anticipation, perhaps some of both.

“If you did this to me, I can bet you have a way of undoing it.”

“Now, why would I do that?  I went to a lot of trouble to ensure that the Winter Soldier was punished for his actions as a traitor, I do not think I wish to see his suffering end.” He replies, the smile returns to his lips.

“See, that is the heart of the problem in all this, as I mentioned before.  You can punish the Winter Soldier if you wish to…” She says.

Natasha moves suddenly, with a speed he does not anticipate.  He underestimates her, as many have done before, it is probably why he made her a target in the first place.  So many that came before him did the same, but now they are either where is or underground.  She supposes it is his choice where he ends up after this is over.

Her hands and arms slide around his neck, locking tight and pulling him to stand.  She is already behind him, kneeling on his cot and using her body weight for leverage.

“...But again, I will not be your tool to do so.  Now, tell me what your method was, what you did to ensure I could not regain my memories, and I will consider allowing you to breathe again.”  She says.

He sputters and coughs, but it sounds more like a laugh than a gasp for breath.  She releases the pressure on his windpipe slightly to allow him to speak, and he does of course.

“You have nothing to offer me, Natalia.  Nothing I would want more than I want the Winter Soldier to suffer.”  

“I suppose you are right.”  She confirms.  

She releases him and crosses the room with that graceful speed again.  Her fingers touch the panel and bring the barrier back up between them.

“I do not have anything want, but I thought perhaps since you were so hell bent on revenge against those that wronged you, that perhaps I should learn from the lesson you taught me.  There are still facilities, long abandoned but still intact, equipped with the technology our dear Soviet superiors used on people like me.  I am sure that I could talk Maria Hill into releasing you into my custody, I could take you there.  All it would take is a few changes to the programming, and perhaps you could be just like the man you hold so much jealousy for.”  She says.

She watches as his confidence falters, as his assurance that she could not break him starts to fade away.  

“We could make you the next true American hero.  That is all I can offer you.” She smiles widely at him now, because she can see the terror in his eyes.

“Perhaps you could be the next Captain America, if you play your cards right… Now lets see about those release orders.” The last threat is a hollow one, but it is the only hollow threat she provides him.  Natasha turns on heel and walks out of the room, but Novokov’s shrieked cries and pleas follow her out as she exits.

 

**************************************

She waits a good twenty minutes before she enters the cell again, all the while watching Leo Novokov shift uncomfortably and beg the walls to share his confession.  Natasha might have waited longer, she enjoyed watching him stir, but she also wants this business done with.

A few quick strides and she is back in the room with her attacker, her kidnapper, but the power dynamic has shifted so completely.  He looks like little more than a scared child now, one begging not to be punished.  Before she can even utter a word, his sins fall from his mouth.

“Your memories are still there, that is why they could not find them, they were never gone.  I never took them.  I simply had Dr. Rodchenko block you from accessing them, he explained it was similar to people who endure trauma, and block out any memories of trauma.  He-- We turned the Winter Soldier into a trauma event but an isolated one, one that your mind coudl still map your memories around…” He explains, his tone of voice a plea for her mercy.

“How do I fix it?” She responds, each of her words punctuated and strong.  

“I don’t know.” He says, barely a whisper.

“I suppose you and I have a trip coming up, then, Leonid.”  She says, and turns for the door once again.

“I don’t know!  It was never my purpose to heal your mind!  Only to severe your connection to the Winter Soldier!”  He pleads.

Natasha does not stop though, she exits the cell and shuts the door hard behind her.  Maria and Bucky look at her expectantly, but Bucky is actually the first to speak.  

“I told you, it’s hopeless.  It’s why I had them stop the treatments.”  

“They were treating the wrong thing, trying to replace memories that weren’t gone to begin with, to write programming where it already existed.” She says as she shakes her head at him.  She turns to look at Maria, who raises both her eyebrows at Natasha.

“What do you want to borrow?” Maria asks.

“A few of SHIELD’s finest neuroscientists, perhaps a psychiatrist and psychologist, if you can spare them.”

Maria turns and starts to head toward the elevator.

“I’ll see what I can do.” She says over her shoulder.  

 

*************************

It truly had not taken much to remove the block, though the kind of programming she had suffered was complicated.  The people at SHIELD were able to focus their treatments, now that they knew what they were looking for.  

The chair they constructed for such treatments looks a little daunting after the last few days, but she does not hesitate to sit in it.

Her memories flood in like waves as they complete the treatment, lapping at the shores of her mind and connecting with thoughts and images that already exist with in her consciousness.  The first memory she can pick out of the waves is one of Bucky...No, not Bucky.  James.  She calls him James.  He is smiling at her through an slightly opaque gray smoke.  Smoke from the grenade she used to challenge him, to trick him into giving her just wants he wanted.  He falls for it, but she is impressed none the less.  Natasha finds him attractive in the Captain America outfit he wears, even though it should bring to mind feelings of crush capitalist pigs.  Somehow it suits him.

The next image becomes vivid almost immediately after the first.  They lie in the snow, both bundled up tightly for the weather, and they laugh together.  Their mission is over and there is some time before they need to report back to the Red Room.  He is warm against her side, and he feels like home in a way she is not sure she has ever known before.  In this moment she is not a spy, or a weapon, she is simply a woman and a happy one.  He moves up to his elbows and leaves over to plant a kiss on her forehead and she realizes this is something more than happiness.  This is love.

The next is more recent and so different from the last.  Gunfire sings in the air around them, they are battling against multiples foes.  She flips gracefully through the scene of battle, and his gait matches her movements, even if his mode of movement is much more brutal than hers.  They move together with a rhythm that feels long practiced and precise, like a dance that they have done so many times before.  She could ask for a better partner, a better man.  He fits with her in a way that no one else could.

The last one to stick out is from a time of distress, she is in the graveyard with Leo Novokov, and she can see James coming for her.  He shoots at her, but she knows he means to miss, though at the time she does not know why.  She takes the advantage he gives her and kicks him square in the head.  It’s barely a minute later when Leo Novokov has a gun to her head, and the man she thought was her partner is now using her as leverage against James.  Clint hits her calve with an arrow and she and Novokov both go down.  When James comes to comfort her, the words like knives fall from her lips.

“Who the Hell is Bucky?”

But now she knows the answer to that question.

James “Bucky” Barnes is a man who carries the weight of the world and all he did, whether conscious of it or not, on his shoulders.  He is brutal and beautiful.  He is good and sometimes he is broken, but so is she.  They stitch each other back up, pull each other back together, even when it seems like all is lost.  She understands why he asked the doctors to stop, even if she wishes they had not, because he sees the damage done to her like he sees the damage done to himself.  It is a pain he will not inflict on her, even if it means he loses her.  

Her eyes open and he is the first thing that fills her gaze, his features filled with both worry and perhaps...Hope?  

She smiles softly at him, as someone helps her up from the chair where she sat.  She steadies easily, and says his name, like a sigh.  

“James.” She says as tears blur her vision, but she blinks them quickly away.

Her smile widens and it almost seems to infect him as well, a grin spreads across his face as he takes a step toward her.  Her arms slip easily around his neck as his enfold her waist.  He buries his head in her hair and tightens his grip around her.  

“Natalia.”  He breathes.

He pulls back and look at her, that concern flooding his features again.  

“Are you--Are you alright?  Is everything back?” He asks.

She nods up at him.   Natasha notices that Maria has already started clearing the agents and doctors from the room, and eventually she is left alone with James.

“I missed you.  I missed you and I didn’t even know what I was missing….Oh, James.”  She sighs.  

“I love you.”  She whispers.  

“I love you too.” He replies.

He closes the gap between their mouths, and she realizes she has felt as if she were starving for a long time.  Craving something she could not place, a connection she did not know she had lost.

As his lips envelope hers, the feeling drifts away until she can no longer even recall what it felt like.  It doesn’t matter anymore, because she had found him again.

She has found her home again.

 

_ The chair they constructed for such treatments looks a little daunting after the last few days, but she does not hesitate to sit in it.  
Art by Sarah @ sketchandsquee.tumblr.com _

_ Her eyes open and he is the first thing that fills her gaze, his features filled with both worry and perhaps...Hope?  
Art by Sarah @ sketchandsquee.tumblr.com  _


End file.
